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Some 163 years after they disappeared into the icy fastness of the Arctic archipelago, Sir John Franklin's ill-fated ships, Erebus and Terror, are once again at the centre of a great geopolitical game over claim to the Northwest Passage.
After decades of official indifference to the possibility that new technologies might locate the missing Royal Navy ships, Ottawa is not only mounting a search, reportedly from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen and led by Parks Canada senior underwater archaeologist Robert Grenier, but the Conservative government is investing it with national purpose. Environment Minister John Baird has scheduled a news conference Friday.
The federal government's sudden interest in the Erebus and Terror is intertwined with Canada's attempts to assert sovereignty over its Arctic. The Harper government is already investing in upgrading Canada's military capability in the North. In last October's Throne Speech, it announced plans for a “world-class Arctic research station,” as well as a comprehensive northern strategy. It now appears to be using history to strengthen its claim.
Ottawa's efforts are partly in response to climate-change factors that are transforming the ice-clogged Northwest Passage of Franklin's day into a viable commercial shipping route the United States and other countries consider international waters. There are also concerns over Canada's claims to the continental shelf, and the spat with Denmark over ownership of Hans Island.
Petty Officer John Torrington, first known member of the expedition to die. (Photo courtesy of Own Beattie/University of Alberta)
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If Franklin's ships were found, it is possible that new light would be shed on the fate of the 1845 British Arctic Expedition. Among the trophies that might be retrieved from the wrecks are metal daguerreotype images of the expedition, as the explorers carried a primitive camera with them. Inuit also reported finding bodies aboard one ship, and so any discovery is likely to interest the British government as it would represent a burial ground.
But much is already known. An admiralty record form deposited by Franklin's crews, and found by 19th-century searchers, reported that Franklin had died aboard ship along with many others. The document, which had been placed in a cairn, said the ships had been trapped in ice for two winters off the coast of King William Island, and had been deserted in 1848. A debris field, including human remains, revealed the survivors had shambled down that island dragging lifeboats loaded with a bizarre accumulation of Victorian detritus, including curtain rods and books. This attempted escape quickly became a death march for the remaining crewmen. In all, 129 men died.
In the 1980s, University of Alberta forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie investigated skeletal remains located on King William Island, and exhumed the three expedition graves on Beechey Island, off which the Franklin expedition had spent the winter of 1845-46. Dr. Beattie's research revealed that the crewmen were suffering from lead poisoning from the expedition's tinned food supply. He also became the first to prove that scurvy and cannibalism plagued the expedition's final days.
Subsequent researchers have largely focused on locating the ships, using Inuit oral testimony recorded by 19th-century searchers. As late as 1923, explorer Knud Rasmussen recorded an Inuit description of a deserted ship off the northwest coast of King William Island with “many dead men.”
A French filmmaker and Inuit searcher jointly applied two years ago for federal government support for an expedition under its International Polar Year program. Ottawa appears to have concluded it was such a good idea that the government has now contracted Franklin fever itself.
If the search is successful, the government will be able to bask in much credit. The Franklin expedition, especially following Dr. Beattie's research, has recaptured the popular imagination. Writers like Margaret Atwood, William T. Vollmann and Mordecai Richler, the songwriter James Taylor, and even the British heavy-metal band Iron Maiden, have been inspired by the Franklin saga. A novel on the subject, The Terror, by Dan Simmons was a best-seller in the U.S. last year.
However, if the expedition to locate the ships fails, as previous privately funded searches have, questions will invariably be raised over the cost of the research, and even over the decision to make Erebus and Terror a focus for scarce marine heritage resources.
John Geiger, The Globe's editorial board editor, is the author, with Owen Beattie, of Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (Greystone Books).
